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Public Authorities and Power Holders
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LLM · Group 1 Constitutional and Administrative Law
2018 Examination
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LLM Group 1 Constitutional and Administrative Law Public Authorities and Power Holders 2018 Question Paper with Solutions
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First published on munotes.in on 12 August 2026.
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Model answers written and edited by the munotes.in editorial desk.
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The University does not publish an official answer key for this paper. The answers in this volume are model answers, written to show how a full-mark answer is built. They are a study aid, not an authority on what an examiner marked.
The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by the University of Mumbai at the 2018 examination.
The answers in this volume state the law as it stands today, not as it stood when the paper was set. Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, inserted in 2018, again requires prior approval before any inquiry into a public servant, and in Centre for Public Interest Litigation v. Union of India, 13 January 2026, two judges divided on its validity, so the question now goes to a larger Bench. CBI v. R.R. Kishore, 11 September 2023, held section 6A of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act void from its insertion in 2003. The amending Acts of 2021, upheld in Dr. Jaya Thakur v. Union of India, let the Director's two year tenure be extended to five. State of West Bengal v. Union of India, 10 July 2024, held maintainable a State's suit over investigation without its consent. And the Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2014, has never been brought into force, so protected disclosures still rest on the Resolution of 2004. Where an answer relies on any of these it gives the date.
Contents
The questions below are the paper as the University of Mumbai set it at the 2018 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2018 examination, reproduced as the University of Mumbai set them, in the order it set them. Nothing has been reworded, added or left out. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Duration 3 hours · Total marks 100 · 12 questions answered
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
SECTION I
Paper 25924. Attempt any four questions, all questions carry equal marks, 25 marks each
any four of six · 100 Marks
1.What do you understand by the Judicial Inquiries? Write in detail citing appropriate examples of Judicial Inquiries.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: the meaning, and the distinction between a judicial inquiry and a trial, which governs the whole answer; the machinery of the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952, section by section, since the question says "in detail"; why a judge is chosen and what that adds and does not add; Ram Krishna Dalmia and State of Karnataka worked out; the examples the question requires, by date, each with what became of the report; the reforms that follow; and a conclusion. This question is set again as the second paper's question 5, where it is answered through the purposes an inquiry serves.
The meaning
A judicial inquiry is an inquiry into a definite matter of public importance conducted by a sitting or retired judge, ordinarily as a Commission of Inquiry appointed under section 3 of the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952. The word judicial describes the person conducting it and the method he uses; it does not describe the nature of the proceeding. The inquiry is an executive fact-finding exercise. It tries nobody, determines no rights and imposes no liability, and everything that is impressive and everything that is disappointing about the institution follows from that single fact.
Distinguish three things from it. A criminal trial decides whether a named accused committed a named offence, on proof beyond reasonable doubt and under the law of evidence. A departmental inquiry decides an employee's liability to a penalty under service rules. An administrative inquiry by officials is not under the Act at all and carries none of its powers. A judicial inquiry produces a narrative and an opinion; the others produce decisions.
The machinery of the Act of 1952
Section 3, appointment. The appropriate Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, appoint a Commission of Inquiry into any definite matter of public importance, and must do so if a resolution to that effect is passed by the House of the People or the Legislative Assembly. The notification fixes the terms of reference, which bound the Commission's jurisdiction absolutely: it can neither travel outside them nor enlarge them. Section 3(2) and (3) provide for one or more members and for filling vacancies, and section 11 permits additional members later.
Section 4, the working powers. While making an inquiry the Commission has the powers of a civil court trying a suit in respect of summoning and enforcing the attendance of any person from any part of India and examining him on oath; requiring the discovery and production of documents; receiving evidence on affidavits; requisitioning any public record or copy from any court or office; and issuing commissions for the examination of witnesses or documents. The power to requisition public records is the most important in practice, because the material is almost always in the administration's own possession.
Section 5, the additional powers, and they are conditional. Only where the appropriate Government declares by notification that section 5 applies may the Commission require any person to furnish information on specified points, enter and search any building or place where it has reason to believe that relevant books or documents may be found and seize them or take copies, and have a person examined. Whether the Government makes that declaration is a quiet but real form of control over how searching the inquiry can be.
Section 5A allows the Commission to use the services of any officer or investigation agency of the Central or a State Government and to direct a preliminary inquiry. This is its only investigative capacity, and the officers are borrowed from the administration under inquiry.
Section 6, protection of the witness. No statement made in the course of giving evidence before the Commission shall subject the maker to, or be used against him in, any civil or criminal proceeding, except a prosecution for giving false evidence, provided it was made in answer to a question the Commission required him to answer.
Sections 8, 8B and 8C, procedure and fairness. The Commission may regulate its own procedure, sit in public or private and act on material that would not be evidence in a court. Section 8B requires that a person whose conduct is being inquired into, or whose reputation is likely to be prejudicially affected, be given a reasonable opportunity of being heard, of producing evidence and of cross-examining witnesses; section 8C entitles him to counsel. Both were inserted by amendment in 1971 and are the source of the institution's fairness and of most of its delay.
Section 10 makes members and officers public servants and deems the proceedings judicial proceedings for the law of perjury, section 10A punishes acts calculated to bring the Commission into disrepute, and section 7 lets the appropriate Government notify that the Commission shall cease to exist. Section 3(4) requires the report, with a memorandum of the action taken, to be laid before the House within six months of its submission, and that is the whole of the accountability the Act creates.
Why a judge
The subject matter is almost always the conduct of the Government, the police or persons close to power, and the appointing authority is the Government. A judge supplies four things: visible independence from the executive; long practice in testing evidence and examining witnesses; familiarity with the fair hearing that section 8B demands; and a standing that makes the report hard to dismiss without giving reasons.
He supplies no additional legal power. Nothing in the Act requires a Commission to be headed by a judge, and some have been headed by retired civil servants. The prestige is real; the authority is exactly what the statute gives.
The two governing cases
Ram Krishna Dalmia v. Justice S.R. Tendolkar, AIR 1958 SC 538, decided on 28 March 1958. The Government of India appointed a Commission consisting of Justice S.R. Tendolkar and two others to inquire into the nature and extent of control exercised over a group of companies associated with Ram Krishna Dalmia and into whether their affairs had been conducted in a manner prejudicial to shareholders or the public. Dalmia petitioned under Article 32, contending that the Act permitted the executive to single out individuals for inquiry in breach of Article 14, that being compelled to depose violated Article 20(3), and that the Act conferred judicial power on a body that was not a court.
The Supreme Court upheld the Act. A Commission of Inquiry is a fact-finding body: it adjudicates nothing, determines no rights and its findings and recommendations are not enforceable proprio vigore, that is, of their own force. It therefore exercises no judicial power and does not attract Article 20(3) as a criminal trial would, and the selection of definite matters of public importance for inquiry is a reasonable exercise of power. One clause of the notification was struck down as too vague to disclose a definite matter.
Its bearing is the paradox at the centre of the subject. The feature that saved the Act, that the Commission decides nothing, is the reason a judicial inquiry can establish the truth and secure nothing by it.
State of Karnataka v. Union of India, (1978) 2 SCC 246, decided on 8 November 1977. The Union Home Minister wrote to the Chief Minister of Karnataka about allegations of nepotism, favouritism and maladministration, and the Union appointed a Commission under Justice A.N. Grover to inquire into the conduct of the Chief Minister and certain ministers. The State sued the Union under Article 131, contending that only the State was the appropriate Government in relation to its own ministers. The Court dismissed the suit by majority: a matter of public importance is not confined to Union subjects, the Union may inquire into the conduct of a State's ministers, and the inquiry cannot interfere with the State's administration because the Commission has no executive or judicial power. The appointing power is therefore very wide, which is precisely why the decision to appoint and the framing of the terms of reference are politically fought over.
The examples, by date
The Shah Commission, 1977 to 1978. Justice J.C. Shah, a former Chief Justice of India, inquired into the excesses of the Emergency, examining preventive detention, censorship, the misuse of the police, demolitions and the sterilisation programme, with former ministers and officials examined in public. Its three reports set out detailed findings; no prosecution of consequence followed, and a later Government effectively repudiated the report.
The Ranganath Misra Commission, 1985 to 1986, inquired into the anti-Sikh violence of November 1984 and was widely criticised for its methodology and conclusions, which is why the same events were inquired into again.
The Justice B.N. Srikrishna Commission, 1993 to 1998, inquired into the riots in Bombay in December 1992 and January 1993 and the blasts that followed. Its examination of the conduct of the police remains the authoritative account of those events. The State Government at first declined to accept the report; it was tabled later with an Action Taken Report accepting some findings and rejecting others, which is the clearest illustration of section 3(4) being complied with while the report is neutralised.
The Justice G.T. Nanavati Commission, 2000 to 2005, inquired again into the 1984 violence and its report, tabled in 2005, was followed by the resignation of a Union Minister, sixteen years after the first inquiry.
The Liberhan Commission, 1992 to 2009, appointed on 16 December 1992 to inquire into the demolition of the disputed structure at Ayodhya with a mandate of three months, reported in June 2009 after roughly forty-eight extensions and was tabled in November 2009. Nothing in the Act limits the term or the number of extensions.
The Nanavati and Mehta Commission, 2002 to 2019, on the Godhra train burning and the violence that followed, reported in parts over seventeen years.
Where the institution fails, and the reforms that follow
Each failure is traceable to a provision. There is no limit on duration, so Liberhan took seventeen years. Section 3(4) requires a memorandum but no reasons, so a Government may reject findings without explaining itself, as with the Srikrishna report. Section 6 sterilises the evidence, so a finding of culpability must be re-established from the beginning in a criminal court years later. Section 5A leaves the Commission dependent on borrowed officers. And no authority is under any duty to act on the report.
The reforms follow directly. A statutory outer limit on the term, with reasons for each extension laid before the House. A duty to lay the report within a short fixed period and to give reasons finding by finding for rejecting any of them, with the memorandum standing referred to a parliamentary committee. A duty on the appropriate enforcement authority to record and communicate a decision where the report discloses an offence. A standing secretariat with its own investigators. And publication by default under section 4 of the Right to Information Act, 2005.
What reform must not do is make the findings binding or admissible, because that would convert the Commission into a court, destroy the reasoning of Dalmia and engage Article 20(3) and the fair trial guarantee in Article 21. The value of an inquiry is that it is not a trial: it can examine systems rather than individual guilt, and can say in public what a criminal court, bound by the rules of evidence and the standard of proof, often cannot.
Conclusion. A judicial inquiry is an executive fact-finding inquiry into a definite matter of public importance conducted by a judge under the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952. The Act gives it the powers of a civil court under section 4, conditional powers of search and information under section 5, borrowed investigators under section 5A, protection for its witnesses under section 6 and a duty of fair hearing under sections 8B and 8C, and requires the report and a memorandum of action taken to be laid before the House within six months under section 3(4). Ram Krishna Dalmia holds that its findings are unenforceable of their own force, which is why the Act is constitutional; State of Karnataka holds that the Union may inquire even into the conduct of a State's ministers, which is why the power is contested.
The examples are consistent: Shah established everything and changed nothing, Srikrishna was answered by a memorandum that rejected what it chose, Misra had to be repeated as Nanavati sixteen years later, and Liberhan reported seventeen years after a fortnight's events. The institution is excellent at discovering the truth and has been given no means of making it matter, and the sensible reform attaches obligations of time, of reasons and of consideration to the report while leaving its fact-finding character untouched.
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